The self-educated Port Royal, Virginia lawyer-journalist George Fitzhugh (1806-81) was
a paradoxical figure among Southern intellectuals. He was often by turns parochial, naive,
and hopelessly addicted to special pleading. Yet he was also the one Southern writer who
more than any other tried to cast a defense of slavery that would be almost universal in
its scope. In Sociology for the South, Fitzhugh's first major work, he argued essentially
four things: that slavery was an organic system that, therefore, could not be criticized or
defended on any mechanistic or purely rationalistic basis; that slavery's essential feature
was the master-slave relationship, which was both interdependent (as in feudalism) and
protective (as in an ideal patriarchal family); that the absence of such a feature in the
North and in Europe made their capitalist systems and cultures inherently predatory and
anarchic and, therefore, vastly inferior both economically and morally to the slave system
and culture in the South. But what made Fitzhugh's argument unique and so radical was
the soft bombshell he dropped in the closing section of his chapter "Negro Slavery": that
because the essence of slavery was "protection" through "government," the system so
defined ought in various ways to be applied to the North and extended in various ways
in what Fitzhugh implicitly conceded was a less than perfectly patriarchal South. The
supreme irony of Fitzhugh's position was that in advancing such protective schemes he
was merely echoing, as he pointed out, many of the liberal and radical sentiments of
reformers and critics in capitalist Europe and the North. As a picture of Southern slavery,
Fitzhugh's critique was obviously perverse, but as a window on the contradictions of
nineteenth-century capitalist culture, it was extraordinarily illuminating.

Chapter 1.

FREE TRADE.

Political economy is the science of free society. Its theory and its history alike establish this
position. Its fundamental maxims, Laissez-faire and "Pas trop gouverner," are at war with all
kinds of slavery, for they in fact assert that individuals and peoples prosper most when
governed least. It is not, therefore, wonderful that such a science should not have been believed
or inculcated whilst slavery was universal. Roman and Greek masters, feudal lords and Catholic
priests, if conscientious, must have deemed such maxims false and heritical, or if
unconscientious, would find in their self-interest sufficient reasons to prevent their
propagation....

Until now, industry had been controlled and directed by a few minds. Monopoly in its
every form had been rife. Men were suddenly called on to walk alone, to act and work for
themselves without guide, advice or control from superior authority. In the past, nothing like
it had occurred; hence no assistance could be derived from books. The prophets themselves had
overlooked or omitted to tell of the advent of this golden era, and were no better guides than
the historians and philosophers. A philosophy that should guide and direct industry was equally
needed with a philosophy of morals. The occasion found and made the man. For writing a one-
sided philosophy, no man was better fitted than Adam Smith....

Adam Smith's philosophy is simple and comprehensive, (teres et rotundus.) Its leading and
almost its only doctrine is, that individual well-being and social and national wealth and
prosperity will be best promoted by each man's eagerly pursuing his own selfish welfare
unfettered and unrestricted by legal regulations, or governmental prohibitions, farther than such
regulations may be necessary to prevent positive crime. That some qualifications of this
doctrine will not be found in his book, we shall not deny; but this is his system. It is obvious
enough that such a governmental policy as this doctrine would result in, would stimulate
energy, excite invention and industry, and bring into livelier action, genius, skill and talent. It
had done so before Smith wrote, and it was no doubt the observation of those effects that
suggested the theory. His friends and acquaintances were of that class, who, in the war of the
wits to which free competition invited, were sure to come off victors. His country, too, England
and Scotland, in the arts of trade and in manufacturing skill, was an overmatch for the rest of
the world. International free trade would benefit his country as much as social free trade would
benefit his friends. This was his world, and had it been the only world his philosophy would
have been true. But there was another and much larger world, whose misfortunes, under his
system, were to make the fortunes of his friends and his country. A part of that world, far more
numerous than his friends and acquaintance was at his door, they were the unemployed poor,
the weak in mind or body, the simple and unsuspicious, the prodigal, the dissipated, the
improvident and the vicious. Laissez-faire and pas trop gouverner suited not them; one portion
of them needed support and protection; the other, much and rigorous government. Still they
were fine subjects out of which the astute and designing, the provident and avaricious, the
cunning, the prudent and the industrious might make fortunes in the field of free competition.
Another portion of the world which Smith overlooked, were the countries
with which England traded, covering a space many hundred times larger than England herself.
She was daily growing richer, more powerful and intellectual, by her trade, and the countries
with which she traded poorer, weaker, and more ignorant. Since the vast extension of trade,
consequent on the discoveries of Columbus and Vasco de Gama, the civilized countries of
Europe which carried on this trade had greatly prospered, but the savages and barbarians with
whom they traded had become more savage and barbarous or been exterminated. Trade is a war
of the wits, in which the stronger witted are as sure to succeed as the stronger armed in a war
with swords. Strength of wit has this great advantage over strength of arm, that it never tires,
for it gathers new strength by appropriating to itself. the spoils of the vanquished. And thus,
whether between nations or individuals, the war of free trade is constantly widening the relative
abilities of the weak and the strong. It has been justly observed that under this system the rich
are continually growing richer and the poor poorer. The remark is true as well between nations
as between individuals. Free trade, when the American gives a bottle of whiskey to the Indian
for valuable furs, or the Englishman exchanges with the African blue-beads for diamonds, gold
and slaves, is a fair specimen of all free trade when unequals meet. Free trade between England
and Ireland furnishes the latter an excellent market for her beef and potatoes, in exchange for
English manufactures. The labor employed in manufacturing pays much better than that
engaged in rearing beeves and potatoes. On the average, one hour of English labor pays for two
of Irish. Again, manufacturing requires and encourages skill and intelligence; grazing and farm-
ing require none. But far the worst evils of this free trade remain to be told. Irish pursuits
depressing education and refinement, England becomes a market for the wealth, the intellect,
the talent, energy and enterprise of Ireland. All men possessing any of these advantages or
qualities retreat to England to spend their incomes, to enter the church, the navy, or the army,
to distinguish themselves as authors, to engage in mechanic or manufacturing pursuits. Thus
is Ireland robbed of her very life's blood, and thus do our Northern States rob the Southern....

Political economy is quite as objectionable, viewed as a rule of morals, as when viewed
as a system of economy. Its authors never seem to be aware that they are writing an ethical as
well as an economical code; yet it is probable that no writings, since the promulgation of the
Christian dispensation, have exercised so controlling an influence on human conduct as the
writings of these authors. The morality which they teach is one of simple and unadulterated
selfishness. The public good, the welfare of society, the prosperity of one's neighbors, is,
according to them, best promoted by each man's looking solely to the advancement of his own
pecuniary interests. They maintain that national wealth, happiness and prosperity being but the
aggregate of individual wealth, happiness and prosperity, if each man pursues exclusively his
own selfish good, he is doing the most he can to promote the general good. They seem to forget
that men eager in the pursuit of wealth are never satisfied with the fair earnings of their own
bodily labor, but find their wits and cunning employed in over-reaching others much more
profitable than their hands. Laissez-faire, free competition begets a war of the wits, which these
economists encourage, quite as destructive to the weak, simple, and guileless, as the war of the
sword....

It begets another war in the bosom of society still more terrible than this. It arrays capital
against labor. Every man is taught by political economy that it is meritorious to make the best
bargains one can. In all old countries, labor is superabundant, employers less numerous than
laborers: vet all the laborers must live by the wages
they receive from the capitalists. The capitalist cheapens their wages; they compete with and
underbid each other, for employed they must be on any terms. This war of the rich with the
poor and the poor with one another, is the morality which political economy inculcates. It is the
only morality, save the Bible, recognized or acknowledged in free society, and is far more
efficacious in directing worldly men's conduct than the Bible, for that teaches self-denial, not
self-indulgence and aggrandizement. This process of underbidding each other by the poor,
which universal liberty necessarily brings about, has well been compared by the author of Alton
Locke to the prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta strangling one another. A beautiful system
of ethics this, that places all mankind in antagonistic positions, and puts all society at war. What
can such a war result in but the oppression and ultimate extermination of the weak? In such
society the astute capitalist, who is very skilful and cunning, gets the advantage of every one
with whom he competes or deals; the sensible man with moderate means gets the advantage of
most with whom he has business, but the mass of the simple and poor are outwitted and cheated
by everybody

Woman fares worst when thrown into this warfare of competition. The delicacy of her sex
and her nature prevents her exercising those coarse arts which men do in the vulgar and
promiscuous jostle of life, and she is reduced to the necessity of getting less than half price for
her work. To the eternal disgrace of human nature, the men who employ her value themselves
on the Adam Smith principle for their virtuous and sensible conduct. "Labor is worth what it
will bring; they have given the poor woman more than any one else would, or she would not
have taken the work." Yet she and her children are starving, and the employer is growing rich
by giving her half what her work is worth. Thus does free competition, the creature of free
society, throw the whole burden of the social fabric on the poor, the weak and ignorant. They
produce every thing and enjoy nothing. They are "the muzzled ox that treadeth out the straw."

In free society none but the selfish virtues are in repute, because none other help a man in
the race of competition. In such society virtue loses all her loveliness, because of her selfish
aims. Good men and bad men have the same end in view: self-promotion, self-elevation. The
good man is prudent, cautious, and cunning of fence; he knows well, the arts (the virtues, if you
please) which enable him to advance his fortunes at the expense of those with whom he deals;
he does not "cut too deep"; he does not cheat and swindle, he only makes good bargains and
excellent profits. He gets more subjects by this course; everybody comes to him to be bled. He
bides his time; takes advantage of the follies, the improvidence and vices of others, and makes
his fortune out of the follies and weaknesses of his fellow-men. The bad man is rash, hasty,
unskilful and impolitic. He is equally selfish, but not half so prudent and cunning. Selfishness
is almost the only motive of human conduct in free society, where every man is taught that it
is his first duty to change and better his pecuniary situation.

The first principles of the science of political economy inculcate separate, individual
action, and are calculated to prevent that association of labor without which nothing great can
be achieved; for man isolated and individualized is the most helpless of animals. We think this
error of the economists proceeded from their adopting Locke's theory of the social contract. We
believe no heresy in moral science has been more pregnant of mischief than this theory of
Locke. It lies at the bottom of all moral speculations, and if false, must infect with falsehood
all theories built on it. Some animals are by nature gregarious and associative. Of this class are
men, ants and bees. An isolated man is almost as helpless and ridiculous as a bee setting up for
himself.
Man is born a member of society, and does not form society. Nature, as in the cases of bees and
ants, has it ready formed for him. He and society are congenital. Society is the being he one
of the members of that being. He has no rights whatever, as opposed to the interests of society;
and that society may very properly make any use of him that will redound to the public good.
Whatever rights he has are subordinate to the good of the whole; and he has never ceded rights
to it, for he was born its slave and had no rights to cede.

Government is the creature of society, and may be said to derive its powers from the
consent of the governed; but society does not owe its sovereign power to the separate consent,
volition or agreement of its members. Like the hive, it is as much the work of nature as the
individuals who compose it. Consequences, the very Opposite of the doctrine of free trade,
result from this doctrine of ours. It makes each society a band of brothers, working for the
common good, instead of a bag of cats biting and worrying each other. The competitive system
is a system of antagonism and war, ours of peace and fraternity. The first is the system of free
society; the other that of slave society. The Greek, the Roman, Judaistic, Egyptian, and all
ancient polities, were founded on our theory. The loftiest patrician in those days, valued himself
not on selfish, cold individuality, but on being the most devoted servant of society and his
country. In ancient times, the individual was considered nothing, the State every thing. And yet,
under this system, the noblest individuality was evolved that the world has ever seen. The
prevalence of the doctrines of political economy has injured Southern character, for in the
South those doctrines most prevail. Wealthy men, who are patterns of virtue in the discharge
of their domestic duties, value themselves on never intermeddling in public matters. They
forget that property is a mere creature of law and society, and are willing to make no return for
that property to the public, which by its laws gave it to them, and which guard and protect them
in its possession.

All great enterprises owe their success to association of capital and labor. The North is
indebted for its great wealth and prosperity to the readiness with which it forms associations
for all industrial and commercial purposes. The success of Southern farming is a striking
instance of the value of the association of capital and laborers, and ought to suggest to the
South the necessity of it for other purposes.

The dissociation of labor and disintegration of society, which liberty and free competition
occasion, is especially injurious to the poorer class; for besides the labor necessary to support
the family, the poor man is burdened with the care of finding a home, and procuring
employment, and attending to all domestic wants and concerns Slavery relieves our slaves of
these cares altogether, and slavery is a form, and the very best form, of socialism. In fact, the
ordinary wages of common labor are insufficient to keep up separate domestic establishments
for each of the poor, and association or starvation is in many cases inevitable. In free society,
as well in Europe as in America, this is the accepted theory, and various schemes have been
resorted to, all without success, to cure the evil. The association of labor properly carried out
under a common head or ruler, would render labor more efficient, relieve the laborer of many
of the cares of household affairs, and protect and support him in sickness and old age, besides
preventing the too great reduction of wages by redundancy of labor and free competition.
Slavery attains all these results. What else will? . . .

A maxim well calculated not only to retard the progress of civilization, but to occasion its
retrogression, has grown out of the science of political economy The world is too much
governed," has become quite an axiom with many politicians. Now
the need of law and government is just in proportion to man's wealth and enlightenment.
Barbarians and savages need and will submit to but few and simple laws, and little of
government. The love of personal liberty and freedom from all restraint, are distinguishing traits
of wild men and wild beasts. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors loved personal liberty because they
were barbarians, but they did not love it half so much as North American Indians or Bengal
tigers, because they were not half so savage. As civilization advances, liberty recedes; and it is
fortunate for man that he loses his love of liberty just as fast as he becomes more moral and
intellectual. The wealthy, virtuous and religious citizens of large towns enjoy less of liberty than
any other persons whatever, and yet they are the most useful and rationally happy of all
mankind. The best governed countries, and those which have prospered most, have always been
distinguished for the number and stringency of their laws. Good men obey superior authority,
the laws of God, of morality, and of their country; bad men love liberty and violate them. It
would be difficult very often for the most ingenious casuist to distinguish between sin and
liberty; for virtue consists in the performance of duty, and the obedience to that law or power
that imposes duty, whilst sin is but the violation of duty and disobedience to such law and
power. It is remarkable, in this connection, that sin began by the desire for liberty and the
attempt to attain it in the person of Satan and his fallen angels.. The world wants good
government and a plenty of it not liberty. It is deceptive in us to boast of our Democracy, to
assert the capacity of the people for self-government, and then refuse to them its exercise. In
New England, and in all our large cities, where the people govern most, they are governed best.
If government be not too much centralized, there is little danger of too much government. The
danger and evil with us is of too little. Carlyle says of our institutions, that they are "anarchy
plus a street constable." We ought not to be bandaged up too closely in our infancy, it might
prevent growth and development; but the time is coming when we shall need more of
government, if we would secure the permanency of our institutions.

All men concur in the opinion that some government is necessary. Even the political
economist would punish murder, theft, robbery, gross swindling, ~c.; but they encourage men
to compete with and slowly undermine and destroy one another by means quite as effective as
those they forbid. We have heard a distinguished member of this school object to negro slavery,
because the protection it afforded to an inferior race would perpetuate that race, which, if left
free to compete with the whites, must be starved out in a few generations. Members of
Congress, of the Young American party, boast that the Anglo-Saxon race is manifestly destined
to eat out all other races, as the wire-grass destroys and takes the place of other grasses. Nay,
they allege this competitive process is going on throughout all nature; the weak are everywhere
devouring the strong; the hardier plants and animals destroying the weaker, and the superior
races of man exterminating the inferior. They would challenge our admiration for this war of
nature, by which they say Providence is perfecting its own work getting rid of what is weak
and indifferent, and preserving only what is strong and hardy. We see the war, but not the
improvement. This competitive, destructive system has been going on from the earliest records
of history; and yet the plants, the animals, and the men of to-day are not superior to those of
four thousand years ago. To restrict this destructive, competitive propensity, man was endowed
with reason, and enabled to pass laws to protect the weak against the strong. To encourage it,
is to encourage the strong to oppress the weak, and to violate the primary object of all
government. It is strange it should have entered the head of any philosopher to set the weak,
who
are the majority of mankind, to competing, contending and fighting with the strong, in order
to improve their condition.

Hobbes maintains that "a state of nature is a state of war." This is untrue of a state of
nature, because men are naturally associative; but it is true of a civilized state of universal
liberty, and free competition, such as Hobbes saw around him, and which no doubt suggested
his theory. The wants of man and his history alike prove that slavery has always been part of
his social organization. A less degree of subjection is inadequate for the government and
protection of great numbers of human beings.

An intelligent English writer, describing society as he saw it, uses this language:

"There is no disguising from the cool eye of philosophy, that all
living creatures exist in
a state of natural warfare; and that man (in hostility with all) is at enmity also with his own
species; man is the natural enemy of man; and society, unable to change his nature, succeeds
but in establishing a hollow truce by which fraud is substituted for violence."

Such is free society, fairly portrayed; such are the infidel doctrines of political economy,
when candidly avowed. Slavery and Christianity bring about a lasting peace, not "a hollow
truce." But we mount a step higher. We deny that there is a society in free countries. They who
act each for himself, who are hostile, antagonistic and competitive, are not social and do not
constitute a society. We use the term free society, for want of a better; but, like the term free
government, it is an absurdity: those who are governed are not free those who are free are not
social....

Chapter IV.

THE TWO PHILOSOPHIES.

In the three preceding chapters we have strewn that the world is divided between two
philosophies. The one the philosophy of free trade and universal liberty the philosophy
adapted to promote the interests of the strong, the wealthy and the wise. The other, that of
socialism, intended to protect the weak, the poor and the ignorant. The latter is almost universal
in free society; the former prevails in the slaveholding States of the South. Thus we see each
section cherishing theories at war with existing institutions. The people of the North and of
Europe are pro-slavery men in the abstract; those of the South are theoretical abolitionists. This
state of opinions is readily accounted for. The people in free society feel the evils of universal
liberty and free competition, and desire to get rid of those evils. They propose a remedy, which
is in fact slavery; but they are wholly unconscious of what they are doing, because never having
lived in the midst of slavery, they know not what slavery is. The citizens of the South, who
have seen none of the evils of liberty and competition, but just enough of those agencies to
operate as healthful stimulants to energy, enterprise and industry, believe free competition to
be an unmixed good.

The South, quiet, contented, satisfied, looks upon all socialists and radical reformers as
madmen or knaves. It is as ignorant of free society as that society is of slavery. Each section
sees one side of the subject alone; each, therefore, takes partial and erroneous views of it. Social
science will never take a step in advance till some Southern slaveholder, competent for the task,
devotes a life-time to its study and elucidation; for slavery can only be understood by living in
its midst, whilst thousands of books daily exhibit the minutes" workings of free society. The
knowledge of the numerous
theories of radical reform proposed in Europe, and the causes that have led to their promulgation,
is of vital importance to us. Yet we turn away from them with disgust, as from something
unclean
and vicious. We occupy high vantage ground for observing, studying and classifying the various
phenomena of society; yet we do not profit by the advantages of our position. We should do so,
and indignantly hurl back upon our assailants the charge, that there is something wrong and
rotten
in our system. From their own mouths we can show free society to be a monstrous abortion, and
slavery to be the healthy, beautiful and natural being which they are trying, unconsciously, to
adopt.

Chapter V.
NEGRO SLAVERY.

We have already stated that we should not attempt to introduce any new theories of government
and of society, but merely try to justify old ones, so far as we could deduce such theories from
ancient and almost universal practices. Now it has been the practice in all countries and in all
ages,
in some degree, to accommodate the amount and character of government control to the wants,
intelligence, and moral capacities of the nations or individuals to be governed. A highly moral
and
intellectual people, like the free citizens of ancient Athens, are best governed by a democracy.
For
a less moral and intellectual one, a limited and constitutional monarchy will answer. For a people
either very ignorant or very wicked, nothing short of military despotism will suffice. So among
individuals, the most moral and well-informed members of society require no other government
than law. They are capable of reading and understanding the law, and have sufficient self-control
and virtuous disposition to obey it. Children cannot be governed by mere law; first, because they
do not understand it, and secondly, because they are so much under the influence of impulse,
passion and appetite, that they want sufficient self-control to be deterred or governed by the
distant
and doubtful penalties of the law. They must be constantly controlled by parents or guardians,
whose will and orders shall stand in the place of law for them. Very wicked men must be put into
penitentiaries; lunatics into asylums, and the most wild of them into straight jackets, just as the
most wicked of the sane are manacled with irons; and idiots must have committees to govern and
take care of them. Now, it is clear the Athenian democracy would not suit a negro nation, nor
will
the government of mere law suffice for the individual negro. He is but a grown up child, and
must
be governed as a child, not as a lunatic or criminal. The master occupies towards him the place of
parent or guardian. We shall not dwell on this view, for no one will differ with us who thinks as
we do of the negro's capacity, and we might argue till dooms-day, in vain, with those who have a
high opinion of the negro's moral and intellectual capacity.

Secondly. The negro is improvident; will not lay up in summer for the wants of winter; will
not accumulate in youth for the exigencies of age. He would become an insufferable burden to
society. Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic
slavery.

In the last place, the negro race is inferior to the white race, and living in their midst, they
would be far outstripped or outwitted in the chase of free competition. Gradual but certain
extermination would be their fate. We presume the maddest abolitionist does not think the
negro's
providence of habits and money-making capacity
at all to compare to those of the whites. This defect of character would alone justify enslaving
him, if he is to remain here. In Africa or the West Indies, he would become idolatrous, savage
and cannibal, or be devoured by savages and cannibals. At the North he would freeze or starve.

. . . [A]bolish negro slavery, and how much of slavery still remains. Soldiers and sailors
in Europe enlist for life; here, for five years. Are they not slaves who have not only sold their
liberties, but their lives also? And they are worse treated than domestic slaves. No domestic
affection and self-interest extend their aegis over them. No kind mistress, like a guardian angel,
provides for them in health, tends them in sickness, and soothes their dying pillow. Wellington
at Waterloo was a slave. He was bound to obey, or would, like admiral Bying, have been shot
for gross misconduct, and might not, like a common laborer, quit his work at any moment. He
had sold his liberty, and might not resign without the consent of his master, the king. The
common laborer may quit his work at any moment, whatever his contract; declare that liberty
is an inalienable right, and leave his employer to redress by a useless suit for damages. The
highest and most honorable position on earth was that of the slave Wellington; the lowest, that
of the free man who cleaned his boots and fed his hounds. The African cannibal, caught,
christianized and enslaved, is as much elevated by slavery as was Wellington. The kind of
slavery is adapted to the men enslaved. Wives and apprentices are slaves; not in theory only,
but often in fact. Children are slaves to their parents, guardians and teachers. Imprisoned
culprits are slaves. Lunatics and idiots are slaves also. Three-fourths of free society are slaves,
no better treated, when their wants and capacities are estimated, than negro slaves. The masters
in free society, or slave society, if they perform properly their duties, have more cares and less
liberty than the slaves themselves. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou earn thy bread!" made
all men slaves, and such all good men continue to be....

We have a further question to ask. If it be right and incumbent to subject children to the
authority of parents and guardians, and idiots and lunatics to committees, would it not be
equally right and incumbent to give the free negro's masters, until at least they arrive at years
of discretion, which very few ever did or will attain? What is the difference between the
authority of a parent and of a master? Neither pay wages, and each is entitled to the services of
those subject to him. The father may not sell his child forever, but may hire him out till he is
twenty-one. The free negro's master may also be restrained from selling. Let him stand in loco
parentis, and call him papa instead of master. Look closely into slavery, and you will see
nothing so hideous in it; or if you do, you will find plenty of it at home in its most hideous
form....

It is a common remark, that the grand and lasting architectural structures of antiquity were
the results of slavery. The mighty and continued association of labor requisite to their
construction, when mechanic art was so little advanced, and labor-saving processes unknown,
could only have been brought about by a despotic authority, like that of the master over his
slaves. It is, however, very remarkable, that whilst in taste and artistic skill the world seems to
have been retrograding ever since the decay and abolition of feudalism, in mechanical invention
and in great utilitarian operations requiring the wielding of immense capital and much labor,
its progress has been unexampled. Is it because capital is more despotic in its authority over free
laborers than Roman masters and feudal lords were over their slaves and vassals?

Free society has continued long enough to justify the attempt to generalize its phenomena,
and calculate its moral and intellectual influences. It is obvious that, in
whatever is purely utilitarian and material, it incites invention and stimulates industry. Benjamin
Franklin, as a man and a philosopher, is the best exponent of the working of the system. His
sentiments and his philosophy are low, selfish, atheistic and material. They tend directly to
make man a mere "featherless biped," well-fed, well-clothed and comfortable, but regardless
of his soul as "the beasts that perish.['']

Since the Reformation the world has as regularly been retrograding in whatever belongs
to the departments of genius, taste and art, as it has been progressing in physical science and its
application to mechanical construction. Media~val Italy rivalled if it did not surpass ancient
Rome, in poetry, in sculpture, in painting, and many of the fine arts. Gothic architecture reared
its monuments of skill and genius throughout Europe, till the 15th century; but Gothic
architecture died with the Reformation. The age of Elizabeth was the Augustan age of England.
The men who lived then acquired their sentiments in a world not yet deadened and vulgarized
by puritanical cant and levelling demagoguism. Since then men have arisen who have been the
fashion and the go for a season, but none have appeared whose names will descend to posterity.
Liberty and equality made slower advances in France. The age of Louis XIV. was the
culminating point of French genius and art. It then shed but a flickering and lurid light.
Frenchmen are servile copyists of Roman art, and Rome had no art of her own. She borrowed
from Greece; distorted and deteriorated what she borrowed; and France imitates and falls below
Roman distortions. The genius of Spain disappeared with Cervantes; and now the world seems
to regard nothing as desirable except what will make money and what costs money. There is not
a poet, an orator, a sculptor, or painter in the world. The tedious elaboration necessary to all the
productions of high art would be ridiculed in this money-making, utilitarian charlatan age.
Nothing now but what is gaudy and costly excites admiration. The public taste is debased.

But far the worst feature of modern civilization, which is the civilization of free society,
remains to be exposed. Whilst labor-saving processes have probably lessened by one half, in
the last century, the amount of work needed for comfortable support, the free laborer is
compelled by capital and competition to work more than he ever did before, and is less
comfortable. The organization of society cheats him of his earnings, and those earnings go to
swell the vulgar pomp and pageantry of the ignorant millionaires, who are the only great of the
present day. These reflections might seem, at first view, to have little connexion with negro
slavery; but it is well for us of the South not to be deceived by the tinsel glare and glitter of free
society, and to employ ourselves in doing our duty at home, and studying the past, rather than
in insidious rivalry of the expensive pleasures and pursuits of men whose sentiments and whose
aims are low, sensual and grovelling.

Human progress, consisting in moral and intellectual improvement, and there being no
agreed and conventional standard weights or measures of moral and intellectual qualities and
quantities, the question of progress can never be accurately decided. We maintain that man has
not improved, because in all save the mechanic arts he reverts to the distant past for models to
imitate, and he never imitates what he can excel.

We need never have white slaves in the South, because we have black ones. Our citizens,
like those of Rome and Athens, are a privileged class. We should train and educate them to
deserve the privileges and to perform the duties which society confers on them. Instead, by a
low demagoguism depressing their self-respect by discourses on the equality of man, we had
better excite their pride by reminding them that they
do not fulfil the menial offices which white men do in other countries. Society does not feel the
burden of providing for the few helpless paupers in the South. And we should recollect that
here we have but half the people to educate, for half are negroes; whilst at the North they
profess to educate all. It is in our power to spike this last gun of the abolitionists. We should
educate all the poor. The abolitionists say that it is one of the necessary consequences of slavery
that the poor are neglected. It was not so in Athens, and in Rome, and should not be so in the
South. If we had less trade with and less dependence on the North, all our poor might be
profitable and honorably employed in trades, professions and manufactures. Then we should
have a rich and denser population. Yet we but marshal her in the way that she was going. The
South is already aware of the necessity of a new policy, and has begun to act on it. Every day
more and more is done for education, the mechanic arts, manufactures and internal
improvements. We will soon be independent of the North.

We deem this peculiar question of negro slavery of very little importance. The issue is
made throughout the world on the general subject of slavery in the abstract. The argument has
commenced. One set of ideas will govern and control after awhile the civilized world. Slavery
will every where be abolished, or every where be re-instituted. We think the opponents of
practical, existing slavery, are estopped by their own admission; nay, that unconsciously, as
socialists, they are the defenders and propagandists of slavery, and have furnished the only
sound arguments on which its defence and justification can be rested. We have introduced the
subject of negro slavery to afford us a better opportunity to disclaim the purpose of reducing
the white man any where to the condition of negro slaves here. It would be very unwise and
unscientific to govern white men as you would negroes. Every shade and variety of slavery has
existed in the world. In some cases there has been much of legal regulation, much restraint of
the master's authority; in others, none at all. The character of slavery necessary to protect the
whites in Europe should be much milder than negro slavery, for slavery is only needed to
protect the white man, whilst it is more necessary for the government of the negro even than
for his protection. But even negro slavery should not be outlawed. We might and should have
laws in Virginia, as in Louisiana, to make the master subject to presentment by the grand jury
and to punishment, for any inhuman or improper treatment or neglect of his slave.

We abhor the doctrine of the "Types of Mankind;" first, because it is at war with scripture,
which teaches us that the whole human race is descended from a common parentage; and,
secondly, because it encourages and incites brutal masters to treat negroes, not as weak,
ignorant and dependent brethren, but as wicked beasts, without the pale of humanity. The
Southerner is the negro's friend, his only friend. Let no intermeddling abolitionist, no refined
philosophy, dissolve this friendship.